Sleep is a Beast, Polar and Bear
by Augment
Summary: There were Limits, Zoro felt, to what his captain should suffer, and Zoro couldn't bring Ace back from the dead, or give Luffy back two years of his life. All he could do was try and make sure Luffy got some actual, genuine, rest.


**Notes: **I know Oda answered a fan's question about the Straw Hats' sleeping patterns but I've just kind of ignored that here.

This one fought me. If you're interested in reading another 2,500 words of headcanon about Zoro interacting with the rest of the Straw Hats at night, it's on my Tumblr.

* * *

It had begun, like all things did, with Luffy.

Zoro had never really slept soundly after he left the dojo, simply because the world was a bad place and it wasn't a good idea to relax anywhere, especially after he'd earned himself the title of 'pirate hunter'. But he'd never really worried about it. He made sure to snatch plenty of sleep during the day, though he never slept deeply and rarely slept for more than four hours at a stretch. On the rare occasions he'd gained travel companions (really, just Johnny and Yosaku), he'd certainly never worried about how well _they _slept.

But then Zoro met Luffy.

Zoro's new captain was stupid loud, and constantly moving, and noise and chaos – when he was awake. When Luffy dropped down for his nightly five to six hours, he slept solidly straight through until morning. If he had a nightmare, he gave very little outward indication of it. A slight frown, perhaps, or some restless movement – nothing that couldn't be attributed to general shifting about in one's sleep. The energy he expended during the day meant he slept – apparently – quite peacefully.

Except he didn't. Zoro didn't know why or how he knew this, but given he and Luffy were in sync approximately two minutes after meeting each other, Zoro supposed it wasn't too much of a surprise that Zoro could tell – from the air, the aether, a sixth sense, _whatever_ – that Luffy had bad dreams, really bad ones. It sounded stupid, but Zoro could _feel_ them, the stress in Luffy's spirit disturbing Zoro's own rest.

Zoro couldn't bring himself to be too annoyed – which in itself should have given him a head's up for the shitstorm he was about to let himself in for, but, whatever. It wasn't like he could leave Luffy to the mercy of his nightmares. The bad dreams didn't come very often, but when they did, Zoro jostled Luffy awake – with some difficulty, he was a very heavy sleeper – waited patiently for his new captain to shake off his demons, and then made up some bullshit reason if Luffy asked what woke him, and ignored the whole thing if Luffy didn't.

For a while, when it was just the two of them, that was that. Then came Nami and Usopp and Sanji, and everyone else after that, and Luffy declared war on the World Government. Zoro got stronger – and so did everyone else.

And then Kuma and the Admirals show up, and that's when it actually begins.

* * *

The thing was, Zoro didn't do trauma, like Luffy didn't do trauma. Shit happened, and if you were strong enough to live through it that was all that really mattered. But hell, they were young, and dumb, and even though they thought they might be invincible they really weren't. Zoro learned this rather rudely when Kuma stepped over rubble and ruin and threatened to take away everything Luffy wanted, and everything that Zoro had come to breathe for.

So it's not really surprising when the insomnia starts. Well, really, the insomnia is Zoro's own fault. Where it actually starts is with screaming nightmares about islands of eternal night, and large bear robots, and his captain's limp and unresponsive body. About his crew, passed out and vulnerable. About the pain that ripped through every nerve receptor in Zoro's body until his world consisted of literally nothing else but burning blood and broken bones. Sabaody didn't help, the bear man showing up and _not _killing them all in a way that Zoro will probably never be entirely comfortable with, and Kuraigana bore an overwhelming resemblance to Thriller Bark that shattered any attempt at getting over that particular event.

So night-time and Zoro were no longer friends. If Zoro made sure he didn't sleep for too long at a time, and if he never slept at night, he could avoid the worst of the dreams and the memories and fear they invoked. And because he continued doing what he always did – shorter naps during the day, a routine of training and meditating at night – no one noticed anything different. The only change was that where before it had been habit, now it became necessity.

By all accounts it shouldn't matter at all. It wasn't like Zoro had the most right to bad dreams. The crew had nightmares as well – Zoro had learnt he had a feel for theirs, as well as Luffy's – and they got much worse and much more frequent after their separation, to Zoro's complete lack of surprise. The night after their reunion, the crew's first night together was sprinkled with such dirt and horror that Zoro pretty much started a fight with a nearby marine ship just to make it stop.

But the main problem was, as much as Zoro's own self-imposed insomnia had dogged him on Mihawk's island – mental exhaustion tripping after physical until 'sleep' was pretty much synonymous with 'unconscious' – and as much as the crew had also clearly suffered, it was also clear that Luffy was by far the worst affected.

In the days after their reunion, and between near-death experiences, Zoro saw how much had changed. Previously Luffy's bad dreams had been relatively rare, and often half-forgotten on waking. Now, they came more often – not every night, though Zoro suspected that might previously have been the case, right after It Happened, when Luffy would have had to fight through the pain all by himself – and the dreams left lingering effects well into the day, which Luffy seemed to deal with by aggressively ignoring the whole issue.

So Zoro had two years of catching up to do, but the problem had escalated, and his previous tactics weren't going to cut it.

The best Zoro had come up with so far was to drag Luffy down next to him with a gruff, "Nap with me." When this happened, the exhaustion had usually reached a high enough level that Luffy subsided with a minimum amount of fuss, and spent the next several hours breathing evenly in Zoro's shadow. Zoro aimed a belligerent kick and anyone inconsiderate enough to bother Luffy with irrelevant observations like, 'the ship is on fire', and that was that.

Even though this tactic worked, it wasn't a permanent solution. Sometimes Luffy would take lone impromptu naps on quiet days –triggered by several nights of accumulated restlessness – but he emerged from these with an awful hollow-eyed look that Zoro could only fix by tossing Chopper (literally) in Luffy's general direction. The sweet and energetic innocence of their doctor did the best job and wiping that expression off Luffy's face, which was pretty much all Zoro cared about these days.

Forcing Luffy to occasionally nap with Zoro was clearly not enough, and it was true that Luffy could handle it – but he shouldn't have to. There were Limits, Zoro felt, to what his captain should suffer, and Zoro couldn't bring Ace back from the dead, or give Luffy back two years of his life. All he could do was try and make sure Luffy got some actual, genuine, rest.

* * *

Zoro wasn't a complicated thinker. His reasoning went like this: if Luffy didn't have nightmares when he napped with Zoro, maybe Luffy wouldn't have nightmares when he napped with other crew members. And since the rest of the crew (mostly) slept through the night, so would Luffy.

One of the things Zoro had learned about Luffy fairly early on in their relationship, was that when he was asleep, Luffy was quite dead to the world. This meant that a sleeping Luffy could take a fair amount of manhandling without waking up, which was incredibly useful for transporting the Captain when he passed out at inconvenient times, and also for Zoro to begin proving his hypothesis.

First up was Usopp. It only seemed fair that Zoro began the experiment with their most restless sleeper.

Zoro waited until Luffy had one of his bad nights – depressingly, he didn't have to wait more than a day or two. Hovering in the dark of the men's quarters, Zoro felt the tell-tale muddying of the air around Luffy, and acted quickly by scooping up a twitching and unhappy Luffy and dumping him – gently – on top of Usopp.

"Huh," Zoro said softly, as Luffy immediately relaxed into a more restful slumber.

Then Usopp's nose, which was the only part of him visible underneath the lanky and sprawling form of his captain, twitched. Zoro rapidly made himself scarce, as Usopp – who was by nature and experience also an extremely light sleeper – woke up and, finding himself being used as a mattress, proceeded to make his displeasure loudly known. So, after all, Luffy's quiet sleep didn't last very long (and neither did anyone else's) but Zoro felt the experiment had been a reasonable success. He just needed to be a little more subtle about it, which was not a concept Zoro was overly familiar with but which he was sure couldn't be too hard.

* * *

When, a couple of nights after the Usopp incident, Zoro deposited a nightmarish Luffy next to Sanji, the effect was once again instantaneous. Luffy's breathing evened out properly and the slight lines of tension across his shoulders and back eased. The Captain snuffled happily in his new position, and slung one leg over Sanji's.

Zoro bit his tongue, hard –he was not going to laugh, he _wasn't_, because that would wake Sanji up and both he and Luffy would receive incredibly bad headaches as a result, but when Sanji cooed contentedly and muttered an indistinct "_Nami-swan~_", slinging an arm affectionately across Luffy as the rubberman drooled on the pillow next to his head, Zoro had to force himself to leave the room before the laughter banding his chest burst out. Holy hell, that would keep him entertained for _months_.

After that Zoro set up a full roster in his head for Luffy's bad nights. It was a quiet, balmy evening when the next one rolled around. Fortunately for Zoro, Nami had taken advantage of the clement weather and had fallen asleep in a low-slung deck chair in the shadow of her tangerine trees.

* * *

Zoro stepped into the grove, a sleeping Luffy in his arms. He was careful with both the trees and his captain, not wanting to bruise either. That said there were a couple of instances when he narrowly avoided clocking Luffy in the forehead with some low-hanging fruit.

Nami barely twitched as Zoro approached, which was a testament both to how far they'd come from Arlong Park, and how tired she was. Zoro carefully laid Luffy down on the soft mulch carpeting the ground, next to Nami's folded knees. Luffy sniffed, and rolled over. Zoro folded the blanket he brought with him and used it to pillow Luffy's head.

Zoro could smell the sweet tang of citrus every time the warm breeze blew, and his captain looked restful. Pausing only to re-adjust the shawl around Nami's shoulders, Zoro left the navigator and Luffy to a good night's sleep.

* * *

It was pissing down with rain the night that Zoro found Robin in the aquarium. When Zoro entered cradling a softly snoring captain, Robin looked up from her book with slight surprise. At night, the two insomniacs usually gave each other space to be quiet and alone. The swordsman laid Luffy down on the bench next to Robin and asked her, softly, "Is it okay if he sleeps here?"

Robin, vaguely nonplussed, nodded her acceptance, and, apparently feeling that his actions required no further explanation, Zoro left Robin to her novel.

The next morning Zoro sidled surreptitiously up to Robin after breakfast as she was sunning herself by the ship's railing, but upon seeing her bite back a smile gave up.

"Did he sleep well?" Zoro asked her bluntly.

"Very peacefully, as far as I could tell," Robin replied, apparently not surprised that Zoro wanted a report of their captain's slumber.

Zoro nodded approvingly, and their attention was momentarily distracted as Luffy ran past waving one of Sanji's spatulas, making a god-awful racket and egged on by a wildly cheering Usopp and a giggling Chopper.

"If I may ask-" Robin began, bringing Zoro's attention back to her, "Why me, and why last night?"

Zoro shrugged. "He was having a bad dream, and that works to fix it."

"I see," Robin said, in a tone that suggested she didn't quite follow Zoro's full reasoning but had gotten the gist. She rallied herself, as the background noise ramped up to include Sanji dishing out justice to spatula-thieves. "If I should be required to perform the same duty in future, please do not hesitate to call on me."

Zoro, who's attention had again been drawn to the ruckus of his crewmates, turned back to her with one of his rare, sincere grins. "Thanks, Robin."

She favoured Zoro with one of her equally rare, sincere smiles, as in the background Nami stepped in to shut everybody up and calm everybody down.

* * *

When Chopper's turn rolled around, Zoro found him conked out amongst the paraphernalia that went along with making his rumble balls.

Zoro frowned. Given his own track record, he didn't really have a leg to stand on regarding Chopper's Jekyll and Hyde situation – but Zoro didn't approve. Maybe because Chopper still seemed so young. Maybe because Zoro was a hypocrite, in the same way that Luffy was.

Zoro sighed, and deposited Luffy on the infirmary bed. Then he gently disentangled Chopper from his test tubes and books, and carried the sleeping doctor over to the bed as well, laying him next to Luffy.

Before Zoro could pull the blanket over them, Chopper transformed – still asleep – into his fluffiest form. He seemed to have done it unconsciously, for warmth. Luffy snuffed a bit, getting Chopper's fur out of his nose, then wrapped both arms around the reindeer and snuggled in. Neither Chopper nor Luffy needed any encouragement to cuddle.

Zoro's mouth twitched. It was really fucking _cute_.

* * *

On the night that Luffy's dream made Zoro's head cloud with panic and his chest tighten with anxiety, Zoro took his captain down to the engine room.

Sunny's rumbles mixed with the hollow sound of water lapping against the hull as the ship moved through the night. It was an odd mix of natural and artificial, but then so was the ship's architect that was currently asleep under an overhang of piping.

There really was no other place for Franky to sleep now, given how much larger he'd gotten since Zoro first met him.

Zoro gently placed the sleeping Luffy so he was pillowed in Franky's large arms. Luffy looked like a comically small teddy bear being hugged by a giant.

Zoro's chest unconstricted as Luffy settled down. Duty discharged, the swordsman laid a hand on a nearby piece of machinery. It was warm, and vibrating slightly. Zoro patted it a few times, then left them to it.

* * *

Holding a dreaming Luffy in a fireman's carry, standing over Brook's bunk, Zoro wondered if this would even work the same way the others had. Would the weird way Brook slept make a difference? Zoro shrugged – if Luffy didn't calm then he'd just try someone else.

Brook slept in paisley pajamas – because of course he did – and an eye mask. This latter item was the opposite of necessary, and Zoro sometimes wondered if Brook did these things for the crew's benefit. Since the skeleton didn't eat or sleep – or breathe – doing something like covering your vacant eye sockets while you 'slept' introduced a bit of humanity into your appearance. It was unnecessary and silly, to Zoro, because while Brook was admittedly very weird Zoro had met _far_ weirder, and the anyway musician's soul shone loud and clear for every single one of his crewmates.

So in retrospect Zoro needn't have worried. Luffy's internal compass had his crew as true north, and Brook's presence soothed his captain's demons just as the rest of the crew had. Zoro redirected Luffy's hands from where they were seeking to tangle in Brook's precious afro, and left his captain to another good night's rest.

* * *

Zoro, yawning, moved quietly past the room full of his sleeping crewmates. Outside the men's room – where Luffy was currently sleeping in this own bunk – he paused, listening carefully. The air felt… clean. _Huh_, Zoro thought with slight surprise, as he poked his head around the door to see if Luffy was, actually, in bed. He was, and sleeping well as far as Zoro could tell. _Awesome_, thought Zoro, time to count his chickens. Or sheep, as the case might be.

Zoro quietly backed out of the room, intending to return to the weights room and get some regular sets in before he began on his katas which had, over the course of countless empty nights, become incredibly complex and could take up to three hours to complete fully. Seven steps from the bunkroom room, however, the air changed. Zoro stopped, stood still, and felt the shift that indicated Luffy was having a nightmare. _One step forward_, Zoro inwardly sighed, as he in fact took seven steps back, to once again stand, protectorate-like, at the bedroom door.

Zoro hovered in the doorway, frustrated and somewhat at a loss. His plans worked, up to a point, and with a little bit of explanation he could probably rope the rest of the crew into taking shifts or something – they'd certainly be willing to, for Luffy. Hell, if he just told Luffy what was up the captain would probably embark upon a new regime of co-operative sleeping with enthusiasm and verve himself, since Zoro doubted that Luffy _enjoyed _his nightmares.

But it was hardly a _solution_.

Zoro sighed, and headed back into the bunkroom to start the whole cycle over again.

* * *

On the last night, Luffy found Zoro, and dragged him out to the deck. "It's your turn," he told Zoro.

Maybe Zoro should have seen this coming. Luffy wasn't the brightest, but after several nights of waking up sprawled over different crew members, he was bound to have figured out what was going on eventually.

Then Zoro thought, _actually, this might work_. Zoro could nap for a couple of hours and then meditate the rest of the night – as long as Luffy got a full night's sleep.

And it was like it used to be, when it was just them in a boat too small to have a name, too small to go to sea, too small for two young men to sleep any way other than half on top each other, pressed shoulder to hip in the softly rocking cradle of their vessel. Luffy was tactile, so during the night he'd inevitably sling and arm or a leg over Zoro, appropriating his first crew member as a mattress. And Zoro had never minded, especially since the warmth was always welcome to ward off the cold sea breeze at night.

The harsh call of a seagull woke Zoro, and his first thought was _oh, there must be an island nearby_. He opened his eyes, and then shut them again immediately against the clear morning sunlight. Luffy had draped an arm and a leg across Zoro, and his head rested heavy on Zoro's shoulder.

Huh, look at that. Zoro had had a solid seven, eight hours of uninterrupted, peaceful sleep, for the first time in two years. Zoro's mouth softened into a not-quite smile – Luffy was right, as usual. If Zoro hadn't given up all resistance a long time ago, he'd do it now.

Zoro enjoyed his sun-warmed limbs without moving for a further fifteen or so minutes, when Luffy started to shift awake. His captain flung out an arm toward Zoro's face, stretching, and Zoro blocked it lazily with his forearm, using instincts he hadn't known he still had.

Luffy sat up, grinning down at Zoro. Zoro squinted upward, the dark head of his captain haloed against the glaring pure blue of the morning sky. There was an _I told you so_ in that grin, but Zoro couldn't quite bring himself to care.

"Good plan, Zoro." Luffy's voice was teasing, but not meanly so. "We'll do it again tonight." And it wasn't really a question.

Then Luffy bounded up, yelling "Sanji, breakfast!" as he deserted Zoro for the galley and food.

Zoro lay there for a bit longer, enjoying the feeling. He had always liked sleeping, and he had missed it.

After a few minutes, Sanji stuck his head out of the galley door. "Don't think that beauty sleep is going to do anything for your ugly mug," he informed Zoro, and then yelled, at the top of his lungs, "BREAKFAST!" and retracted back into the kitchen.

Nami was the first to emerge. As she walked past she favoured Zoro with a teasing grin. "Gonna be less grumpy now, Zoro?"

"Good to see my fellow swordsman looking rested!" said Brook, a morning person – skeleton – as he bounded past.

Robin merely observed, "I'm glad you slept well," as she followed Brook into the galley.

Chopper, trailing Robin, nodded approvingly. "Well done, Zoro. Sleep is essential for physical and mental well-being," and if it was anyone else that would have sounded patronising. Chopper just sounded happy.

Franky laughed after Chopper approvingly. "Full of energy for the new day, bro?" Franky grinned at Zoro, his voice like a slap on the back.

Usopp, the last to arrive, moved across the deck doing ninja moves with accompanying 'hi-ya' noises. "Energy is essential to becoming a strong warrior, Zoro," he said in Zoro's direction, nodding vigorously. "Good to see you're following my example in getting a good night's sleep." Usopp emitted one more strident, "Hi-YA!", as he kicked the galley door open.

* * *

Maybe Zoro hadn't been as subtle as he'd thought.


End file.
